


A great or little thing

by A_French_Ship



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Angst, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Melancholy, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Dunkirk Evacuation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, WW2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-05-15 21:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19304281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_French_Ship/pseuds/A_French_Ship
Summary: After coming back home, Tommy faces pity and misunderstanding, and seeks someone who's been through the same, more than a shoulder to cry on.----"Alex would have phrased it in a better way, Tommy simply envisioned it as the loss of something. Not his innocence – that one he had lost a long time ago, several times, over and over again, if he was being honest with himself. No, he had lost something he didn’t even know he was so dependent upon."





	1. The void

There had been a void, starting from the moment their train had stopped in London. Not that their goodbyes had seemed heart-breaking, not that they had immediately missed each other, but Tommy could not but realise that his life was nothing like it used to be. In fact he had a hard time calling whatever had been happening to him over the last few months living. It was coping, it was carrying on, finding a job, waking up in the morning and going back to bed at night. Alex would have phrased it in a better way, Tommy simply envisioned it as the loss of something. Not his innocence – that one he had lost a long time ago, several times, over and over again, if he was being honest with himself. No, he had lost something he didn’t even know he was so dependent upon. His points of reference, perhaps. Tommy refused to think about it for too long.

When the thought bothered him again this time, he was leaning against a low wall outside of the house whose roof his father had to fix. The truth was that he had promised he would help him in some ways – a promise that neither his mother nor his father had believed since Tommy had always been the clumsy one. So he was waiting, some tools at his feet, drawn out of his daydreaming by his father’s call coming from the top of the roof.

“Tommy boy, oi, Tommy!”

He didn’t remember the moment at which his father had ceased to be his usual self, that old bear from Berkshire, rough around the edges,

“Won’t you listen, boy?” His father repeated, his head poking out from behind a beam. When Tommy blinked back to reality and turned to his father, the old man sighed, almost too affectionately coming from him. “I asked for the smaller hammer.” Tommy looked around on the grass, still half gone. “At your feet,” his father added matter-of-factly, as though he knew exactly what his son was about even if he couldn’t see properly from where he was standing.

That, Tommy thought as he bent down to reach the tool, was something new. His father’s patience, that was. If anything, his father had never been told to be patient, nor affectionate, even to his sons. But many a thing had changed because of the war, many a thing indeed, starting from his brothers’ death and his unexpected return. It had been easy to catch the surprise, the shock, lingering in all the villagers’ eyes when Tommy had stepped out of the bus bringing him home. Had they known one of his siblings had survived, they wouldn’t have bet on Tommy, that was for sure. Even his parents had seemed unsettled at first – loving, happy to see him again, but unsettled. Tommy knew they had wanted to ask questions, yet judging by their youngest son’s silence and the dull look in his eyes, they had not. His mother had focused on filling his skinny body back to health, his father had been careful. And as careful wasn’t something Tommy’s father usually was, the young man had taken it as a sign of that void in their lives.

Without noticing, Tommy had drifted back into his daydreaming, his eyes navigating from the daisies in the grass to the nearby spinney. By the time he came back to reality, his father had climbed down the roof and was putting all of his tools back in their box. Tommy saw no annoyance in his father’s eyes, just a growing uncertainty. After nineteen years of living under the same roof, the young man could read him like an open book – if at first he had thought his son would go back to some sort of normal life, now he was riddled with doubts. Even a simple conversation was now hard to sustain, Tommy’s attention always caught by something else, his mind apparently miles away from their little house in Berkshire. At nights, he woke up from terrible dreams, drenched in sweat, his sheets all over the place, and would sometimes scream loud enough to make their dog bark. 

“What about Reading?” His father asked as they were walking back home, both at one side of the ladder.

Tommy felt his entrails clench at the words, his look dropping to the dirt track. Some weeks after his return, he had found himself a job as a courier in Reading and his parents had gladly thought he was back in tracks – even he had thought the same. His work had felt new, different. There was something pleasant in going all around the city on a bicycle, even more so in spring, knowing he could have been offered a job in a factory or, even worse, been back in the military. All in all open spaces were a blessing, pedalling at top speed and feeling the wind in his hair, a breath of air.

“They don’t want me anymore,” he mumbled, adjusting the position of the ladder under his armpit. His parents knew that already – they had understood it as soon as they had seen the face of their son on the threshold, a pitiful look in his eyes, a bag of clothes on his shoulder. He had not been able to keep the small flat above the shop long enough to find somewhere else to live and so he had left Reading for the countryside.

“You never told us why,” the man insisted casually. Arguing with his son had not the effect it used to have back in the days. Moreover, a part of him had already guessed the reason why Tommy had been fired.

His son didn’t bother replying, simply shrugging and keeping on walking. He wasn’t particularly proud of himself, he had missed a few errands, been late at work after some sleepless nights, nothing a boss would be understanding about. Not that Tommy hadn’t tried – of course he did! – it was just too much, or not enough to keep him grounded. His thoughts always wandered to his brothers and the other boys, those on the beach, back in Dunkirk, those on the boat, on the train.

Alex he remembered the most clearly. A name, a face, a voice even, which he could almost hear when he closed his eyes. They had parted in London, but Tommy could not remember much of what Alex had told him he would do - heading back to Scotland, the younger man knew this for a fact, but where he couldn’t tell. During those days in London, Tommy had felt out of his own body, exhaustion and confusion finally washing over him with a strength he had never known could exist. He had followed Alex around, since he seemed to be the one capable of withstanding for the longest time, and after the few nights they had spent barracked in some sort of dormitory, Alex had brought him to a distant aunt in West End where they had spent some more days in relative silence, both still baffled by the sudden return to normal. A week. A precious week, just the two of them, sheltered in an attic Alex’s aunt had converted into a room. Warm and safe for the first time in ages.

Every time he thought about those days, Tommy would feel a strange thing blossom in his stomach, something he couldn’t really decipher, or wasn’t willing to.

“What is it that you want to do then?”

Tommy had realised the question had slightly changed over the months. At first, his parents had asked him what he would do, but now it wasn’t so much about getting into action right away. It was about if he was capable of envisioning himself doing something at all. That was a privilege, he reckoned, most boys of his age were not asked this type of questions. And that was a privilege he now benefited thanks of his brother’ death. Even though his parents were far from being wealthy, caring for one child wasn’t like caring for three, no matter how terrible it sounded.

That thought kept him up at night. Tommy lost himself in infernal calculations, wondering what it took his parents to keep him fed while he was incapable of earning money to help them. “Duffer, duffer,” he cursed himself each time he felt like he was getting in the way.

“I don’t know,” he replied for the hundredth time, his voice always so low and apologetic. “Perhaps I should go somewhere else, where they’re short on workers, somewhere-“ He paused and sighed, not believing his own words.

When he evoked his project of leaving Berkshire, his parents worried about a mistake he could make. Tommy was sure they imagined him throwing himself from a bridge and drowning in a river, his passivity preventing him from fighting for his life this time.

“That’s a start,” his father concluded, rather badly feigning thrill. And the tone in his voice at that exact moment made Tommy realise that he couldn’t stay any longer. No matter if he had a plan or not, he had to go. Just to leave. Just so he wouldn’t have to face their disappointment every night during supper, their confused compassion.

“Actually, I’ve been writing to a friend,” Tommy lied, his voice keeping the same dull turn so it wouldn’t draw attention. “He told me things are going better up north. The business he’s into, it’s flourishing, he said. His boss is looking for young men and my friend told him he knew people.”

After that it felt as if some burden had been taken off his chest, allowing him to properly breathe. He saw a smile on his father’s face for the first time in what seemed ages and he wondered how the old man had taken the bait that easily.

Along the rest of their way home, it seemed to Tommy that the ladder was growing lighter and lighter under his arm. And as casually as the previous topic had been brought into discussion, his father began to ramble about some old acquaintance in the neighbourhood, giving Tommy the opportunity to simply think about something completely else, some kind of plan to follow in the immediate future, the smallest aim to guide his steps, or at least the will to go.

By the time he lied in bed that night, his eyes not able to close because of the latent fear of dreaming, long after his father had told the news to his mother, long after she had rejoiced and worried all at once, Tommy had almost managed to believe in his own lies, to believe in a future somewhere, in the north, for whatever that meant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are welcome, of course! :)  
> I think that will be a story in 5 chapters, but I'm not quite sure for the moment.  
> The title is from "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Wilde, btw.  
> Peace!


	2. Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tommy starts his journey

 

London was nothing like what Tommy remembered.

The first time he had left Berkshire for the capital it was with two dozens of comrades and one of his brothers, James. They had had no time for visiting, older soldiers taking charge of their lives as soon as their feet had stepped on the platform. An hour later, James was gone with another division and the smile they had shared while getting out the train was the last memory Tommy had of his brother. What about George? He couldn’t remember the last time they had seen each other. The only thing Tommy reminded was James pouting in a corner of the kitchen after their elder had received his draft letter. Had he been jealous, like James? Not really. His last weeks before the front had been a blur, a succession of unhappy walks along the river, nights of their mother’s sewing their old vests back together, her hazel eyes sometimes watering because of the light, she said.

                June 1941. Tommy was back on the train. The same train that had brought him to London almost two years before. There were soldiers too. But he wasn’t one of them. Not anymore. And the guilt which rose from this realisation was stronger than any of the feeble moments of remorse he had felt over the past months.

They chatted, oh-so unaware of the fate ahead of them. They shared army cigarettes and bawdy stories of girls from home, how their thighs miraculously spread wide when they had announced they were on their way to war. To death, Tommy thought as he tried to ignore the glares and heavy stares sliding on him. _Why wasn’t he in a uniform_ , he could almost hear them think. _Why wasn’t he serving the right cause? The country? Freedom?_ It was almost as though their unshaking enthusiasm was failing to envision the young lad as a potential draft dodger without a hint of jealousy.

From time to time, Tommy would feel the urge to justify himself, to tell them about France, about Dunkirk. About the fear and bile rising to his lips every time a bomb would explode next to him. Would he ever find the strength to talk about the vicious relief of seeing another man dying, simply because it wasn’t him being shred into pieces?

Yet he said nothing. He just let the train make its way to London, hoping seeing the familiar face of Alex would soothe the never-ending circle of shame and nightmares. He said nothing, avoiding their curious and judgmental looks, holding his piece of bread against his belly, letting his eyes wander on the changing landscape.

Oftentimes Tommy wondered about the reasons why _they_ had not called him back. Why wasn’t he on the field again? He wasn’t wounded after all, or at least not the way the military was willing to admit. Perhaps Alex had been sent somewhere – not in Scotland. Back in France maybe. It wasn’t absurd, Tommy imagined. Alex was the tougher one, he wouldn’t say no, no matter how strong nausea was every time he now held a gun. Tommy imagined Alex felt the same way he did. Latent fears in the middle of the night, shivers running down his spine every time he heard a deflagration. Alex couldn’t but feel the same way – they had seen the same things, heard the same sounds, felt the same fright.

Why wasn’t he a soldier anymore? Why was he home? He didn’t remember vanishing, hiding, shutting himself away. They had just gone, Alex and he, left the dorms and walked away. That was as simple as this.

                He woke up to that thought, his face pressed against the train window, the soldiers gone, as a hand violently shook his shoulder.

“London, boy,” the old man said as he was already moving to another man sleeping at the back of the wagon.

“Thanks,” Tommy whispered before grabbing his bag and hoping out of the train, the crowd soon swallowing him.

He liked it nonetheless. He liked how unknown he felt in London, how people didn’t know he was the only son of his parents who had come back from the front, how he wasn’t the sole boy from his generation who was still around. London seemed like a city of opportunities, a journey back to the only man he felt he needed the presence of, a journey towards a shapeless future, but a future nevertheless.

After leaving the railway station, he walked through the streets, seeking a bus which would lead him to East End where he remembered Alex’s aunt lived, if she still lived there. He kept being pushed on one side of the kerb or the other, busy Londoners cursing under their breath every time young Tommy would _get on their way_. When he finally found the right bus and bought a ticket to the driver, Tommy leaned against the window and started to think.

No matter how many times he had thought about meeting Alex’s aunt again, he had not come with any sort of idea of what he would tell her, how he would tell her. And now that he was heading to her house, Tommy found himself shivering at the idea of finding a new renter in the house, facing her refusal, her suspicious glare, her reluctance to tell him where Alex was. _People don’t refuse to tell such things_ , _Tommy_ , the young man heard his mother said in an involuntary attempt of self-persuasion. Tommy believed this to be true. He trusted Alex’s aunt and he trusted even more the ghostly presence of his mother in his head.

Inspiration would come when needed, he concluded as he looked up at the drawing of the line inside the bus, following the line until his stop, remembering all of the other bus trips he had done in his short life. But he remembered his main trip, even more so. London, Portsmouth, Le Havre, Maubeuge, Dunkirk, - he had traced his journey on a map with the tip of his finger, over and over again - and his way back, Dunkirk, Dover, London, Reading, home, as though it could prove anything, as though it could prove he had lost his childhood’s roots forever.

Once the driver shouted Mile End Road, Tommy followed the other passengers out of the bus and waited in the middle of the kerb, taking in the East End’s buildings and the ruins here and there, people’s attempts to get them back up without any success. He observed some women doing the laundry sat on their porch, children running after a shabby-looking ball. It felt so different from home, so different from the first time Alex had brought him there. Circumstances were different enough for Tommy to feel like he had never been there before.

Maybe Alex’s aunt had died. During the Blitz. Maybe her house had been destroyed and she was not around anymore. Things had been changing so fast recently, people dying, disappearing, children sent away. He imagined the attic they had slept in exploding, Alex’s aunt being buried under tons of beams and bricks, screaming until she could not. Tommy almost took pleasure in imagining someone else’s suffering. But if she wasn’t there anymore, there was little chance for Tommy to find her at all. The distant memory of this house was his only lead.

He nonetheless asked his way to the house, hating every minute of it. But finally he was there, at her door, knocking, his hands shaking and his stomach squeezing when she opened the door a moment later. She had not changed – why would have she? And her green eyes opened wide when she undoubtedly recognised the young man at her door.

“Tommy, is it?” She asked after a minute of confusion. And when he nodded, she continued. “What are you doing here?”

The question didn’t bear any hostility nor any suspicion, but, once again, why would she feel that way? She couldn’t read minds and she couldn’t imagine the ambiguous reasons pushing Tommy to find Alex.

Without waiting for a reply, the woman stepped aside and invited him in, guiding the young man to a familiar kitchen, the same way he reminded she had when Alex had knocked at her door months before. Tommy sat and accepted the cup of tea she offered and once she was leaning against the stove, expecting some sorts of explanation, he felt like she didn’t deserve to see her time being wasted longer.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he began, stammering a little but holding his awkwardness back, where he deemed it belonged. “But, I’d like to know if you know where Alex is.” Straight to the point, this way he wouldn’t bother her with unnecessary small-talk, which he felt fairly incompetent at anyway.

“Alex?” she echoed, bringing her cup of tea to her lips. “Where he is now?” Tommy nodded, wondering why she was being so scrupulous about it. “I have no idea, boy. I know where he’s supposed to be, but is he where he told me he was heading? I don’t know,” she rambled with a mix of Scottish and Londoner accent Tommy still found tedious to follow.

“He told me he was going back to Scotland,” the young man said just to prove the older lady he wasn’t foreign to Alex’s life.

To this she nodded and took a sip of her tea. “He told me quite the same. I suppose he went back to his parents’ in Perth. He sent me a letter from Dundee, but it’s been a while already, God knows where he is now.” Tommy remained silent, waiting for her to add something, anything that would help him, but instead she asked, “Why are you looking for him?”

“I was just…” Tommy’s voice died there and he felt like he needed a swallow of tea to go on. “I have something I have to tell him.”

The old woman sniggered. “You might as well write to him!”

“I don’t have an address.”

“So you came all the way here instead?” She wasn’t laughing at him anymore, she was both impressed and sympathetic, for she now saw how poorly the young man still was. Nothing had changed since the moment she had welcomed her nephew and his friend at her place, Tommy still looked like an empty shell and she suddenly feared that Alex might be the same.

“I hoped you’d be able to tell me more.”

“I can give you his parents’ address. You can write him there. Maybe he’s still living under their roof, maybe they’ll send your letter to his new home, maybe they’ll write you back to tell you about what he’s up to now.” She shrugged and Tommy saw pity in her eyes. “I’ll write to my sister too. To explain. I don’t like to see you boys in such a state.”

Her fingers touched Tommy’s on the table, before she walked away and rummaged through a drawer until she found some paper and a pencil. Next thing Tommy knew, he was sitting on a bench in Victoria Park, going through the small letter he had just written and read over and over again, without feeling like sending it. Every single word felt out of place, his recollection of their shared moments too vivid, and Tommy knew Alex would laughed at him if there was any mistake in his grammar.

It took him a couple hours before Tommy eventually dropped the envelop into a mailbox, looking at the hole after doing so, as though all of his hopes had suddenly been swallowed by the mouth of a faceless monster. In his pocket were still all of his previous attempts, torn and angrily abandoned.   

* * *

 

_Dear Alex,_

_I don’t know if you’ll receive this letter or if you’ll even remember me. I asked your aunt for your address and we both realised how little we knew about your whereabouts. Yet I’m trying._

_I am not good with words and I know things won’t come out as I want them to. Please bear with me._

_The thing is, I’d like us to meet, for I want to tell you something. It isn’t as important as you may think, I simply want to have a chat._

_I know it’ll be difficult for you to find a moment, since I’m sure you’re busy, but I’m willing to come to Scotland or to wherever you are if this makes things more convenient for you. I have time ahead of me, and more importantly, I really want to talk to you._

_Please write me back,_

_Yours,_

_Tommy._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for keeping up! The writing of another chapter is already begun, so I hope it won't take as long. Until then, have a nice summer!  
> Kudos and comments are more than welcomed !  
> xx


	3. Evolution of the self

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy changes location and finds long-searched eyes.

_Silly Tommy,_

_Of course I remember you. There’s only you to believe my memory is so ineffective. Should I feel insulted?_

_I’m still in Scotland, working for the military, but not the way you think. I’m alright and safe, and I’m positive I might be able to join university next September, or some sort of education._

_Nevermind, I hope you’re fine. Your letter worried me. What time ahead of you are you talking about?_

_And above all, how come a countryside boy like you is now going gallivanting all over Britain so easily?_

_You owe me an explanation, Tommy. But I’m afraid, I cannot move from Dundee for the moment. This being said, if you can meet me there, I’d be more than happy._

_Write me back and I’ll try to arrange everything._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Alex_

_PS: You’re not that bad with words._

 

The letter came more than two weeks later, the address on the front half erased by the rain, his handwriting precise and slender, as Tommy was certain he was so confident he what he was saying – his usual teasing, the guarantee of seeing each other again someday, and more importantly the genuine kindness Alex was not afraid of showing to his friends. Tommy had seen men refusing to sleep too close to each other by fear of being taken for something they were not, refusing a comradely embrace, a smile. Tommy himself had witnessed the discrepancies between the way school girls acted with each other and the way boys of the same age would try to toughen up. Alex seemed to be foreign to those prejudices, Alex was so self-assured that such fears could not reach him. At least, that’s what Tommy believed.

There was another address on the back, the name of a building in Dundee, and Tommy thought his heart would stop while he could feel some hope sparkling again somewhere in his chest. _He was not alone_ , he heard himself whisper in the half-darkness of the room Alex’s aunt had lent him in exchange of a few repairs around the house. Some tiles on the roof which needed to be fixed, the neighbour’s plumbing that leaked, a broken window.

_Dear Alex,_

_I’ll explain everything to you when we’ll meet. I believe I’ll be in Dundee in two weeks or so, if things go as planned._

_Your aunt kindly let me stay at her place and I’m sleeping in the attic we used when we came back._

Tommy looked at the tiny word, petrified. _Back_. Saying from where was unnecessary and the simple fact of mentioning a journey back from somewhere felt nauseating to the young man, as though he was violating a huge secret they had both promised to keep.

After contemplating the word for a long time, Tommy took the pencil back in his sweaty palm and looked up at Alex’s aunt busying herself in the kitchen, talking to an old lady who lived in the neighbourhood and who had come earlier to ask Tommy some help with the opening of a recalcitrant jar of pickles.

Sat in the imaginary island that was the armchair, Tommy felt like they belonged to two different universes – him, writing a letter to his brother in arms, his friend; and them, chatting about the weather, miles away from his heart beating so fast at the simple idea of his words revealing more than he would like.

_You should tell me where and when you want us to meet. I’ll be there for sure_. 

_I’d like to be more talkative as to entertain you a little, but I’m afraid nothing really happens right now. To be honest, nothing really happened those last months._

Tommy paused once again and used his saliva to erase the last couple of lines with the tip of his finger. _Too personal_ , he thought, even if a gut feeling told him Alex would be able to understand what he meant by this.

He let the letter hanging loose, unfinished, when the older woman told him dinner was ready. Later on, he finished it with a clumsy goodbye and ran to the post office so it would leave with the night’s collection of mail. 

  

* * *

 

_Dear Tommy,_

_You’re being more and more mysterious and you don’t leave me any other choice than to tell you to meet me at The Phoenix around seven o’clock, on July the 15th, a Tuesday._

_I hope you will make it, for my curiosity is aroused and I worry myself sick. I might not forgive you, shall you not be there._

_Please be careful, is all I can advise you for the moment._

_Yours,_

_Alex_

 

* * *

 

The next day, Tommy was heading to Kings Cross, getting into a night train to Glasgow, before taking another train to Dundee, a location he would never have thought he would once dream of.

His hands kept on shaking and he couldn’t explain it in any way, be it fear or utter excitement. Alex’s letters trembled in his fingers as he read them again and again, his eyes not able to close in spite of the regular and soothing jolts of the train.

In the aimlessness brought by his sleepless night, he thought he would write a letter as soon as he would find himself in Dundee. To his parents this time. More than a month had already gone by and they ought to know where their last son alive was. He would lie, most likely, say that he had found a job there, a small position, a modest position. Something about repairing old things, just like his father had taught him back in the days. Or maybe a dockworker, carrying things around, for the army or whatever. He would be happy, making friends, drinking at the pub, The Phoenix, _chatting with a few blokes_ , he would say.

Tommy smiled, just thinking about it, the imaginary life he could live in the letters to his parents. The reassurance he could give them. Away but safe. Away but not at war anymore.

He could almost believe it, feeling beer going down his throat as he relaxed after a hard day on the docks, teasing Johnny about this new girl he was fancying, laughing louder than ever, forgetting about the soreness of his muscles. _Yes_ , Tommy grinned in the train to Dundee. This is what he would write home.

And then… then he would meet with Alex, after he would’ve finished his own shift. They would talk, walking along the shore, not mentioning what had brought them together.

His smile faded at the realisation of what he was so pleasantly planning. He would lie. To his mother and father. Like a conman. Turning himself into someone he would never had thought he could become.

He would lie, but for a greater good, another part of Tommy thought. For their best interest. He would be a good son by doing so. They deserved to be soothed, contented after all that they had been through.

He would lie nonetheless. _The Lord detests lying lips_ , his mother used to say when his brothers and he misbehaved.

“For a greater good,” he whispered to himself before the train arrived to Dundee.

* * *

Tuesday came slowly, the few days before stretching immensely as Tommy spent his time walking around the city, getting familiar with the area, his feet always eventually leading him back to the Phoenix, almost instinctively. He knew he hoped he would run into Alex sooner than expected, and the thought made something both painful and pleasant blossom in his stomach.  

He had never been that far from home. Even Dunkirk was closer, he calculated as he walked into the Phoenix, an hour earlier than what Alex had written to him. He ordered a pint and then sat in the back of the pub, slowly sipping his beer as he waited.

His hazel eyes searched for a familiar silhouette in the small crowd of patrons shuffling in. The radio played somewhere in the back and conversations were interrupted by the constant tinkling of glass coming from behind the counter. All of his senses felt ten times sharper while dozens of scenarios wandered in his head – what if Alex didn’t show up? What if they had nothing to say to each other? He had appeared rather interested in his letters, but could they be trusted? He would laugh at him, thinking he’s an empty weakling, as nothing of the hero he’s supposed to be, a ghost, he’s a ghost, the pale reflection of a man.

Tommy suffocated in his beer, rubbed his eyes and pretended it was because of the smoke in there and not because of the contradictory thoughts cascading through his mind. What time is it? Why isn’t Alex already there? What will he say if he comes? Will he send a letter if he doesn’t? He cannot fathom the depths of his despair if he had to take a train back to Reading. No, no, he would never go back there, not after the letter he had sent his parents, full of daily life hope and poor turns of phrase. He would float, here and there, not knowing where he belonged anymore.

“Tommy,” came a hoarse voice the minute Tommy’s look had totally been absorbed by the yellowy substance in his pint. “Tommy, wake up,” Alex joked as he sat roughly on the opposite chair with a sigh of content. “Blimey, Tommy, I swear you’re madder than ever!”

Tommy blinked back to reality, his mouth opening in awe as he recognised the features of the man he had longed to see. Piercing green eyes staring back at him, a bright and falsely sardonic smile on his lips. Alex.

“My, my, I wasn’t expecting such a religious silence,” Alex kept on talking as though he was uncomfortable, which Tommy didn’t believe he could be. “How are you doing?” He finally asked, combing back some of his short wavy hair with his fingers, in a casual manner Tommy had often witnessed when they had stayed together in London.

“I’m alright,” Tommy ended up by stammering out, his cheeks getting one shade darker when his eyes eventually met Alex’s. His were so much more intelligent and Tommy often found himself mute when he happened to look at them for too long.

“I hope you are, you had me worried sick,” he said, Tommy recognising the exact expression he had used in his letter and not knowing what this repetition could mean. “What are you up to?”

This time Tommy couldn’t but snort, all of the tension leaving his body as he felt like their conversation was drifting to a more familiar place. Someone brought Alex a beer and the younger man imagined they looked exactly like what they were – two friends chatting over a drink in a pub, somewhere.

“I don’t know,’ he began and judging by the amused look Alex gave him, Tommy felt the need to come up with something more convincing. “It’s like I told you, I have some free time.”

“Oh, come on, Tommy,” Alex laughed, taking a large swallow of beer, before he added, “No one has free time nowadays.”

“I’ve lost my job,” he suddenly blurted out, to what Alex’s smile crooked a little bit, curious or pitiful, Tommy couldn’t choose. “And I can’t find any, so I just felt like I needed to go somewhere else.” He guessed his situation could be summed up that way.

“Aren’t your parents worried about their baby boy straying far from home?” he asked in his typical brotherly way, probably thinking of himself as some kind of firstborn having to protect Tommy, even though the latter knew Alex was only a year older and pretending to be wiser than he truly was.

“I wrote to them earlier,” he replied, the froth of the beer leaving a childish moustache on his upper lip. “Told them I’ve found a job on the docks,” he added after he licked the bitter white foam off his mouth.

Alex burst into laughter, incredulous. “Stupid Tommy, what sort of bullshit are you telling them, huh?”

Tommy bit his lips, blushing and facing the inside of his beer, searching for something clever to say, but miserably failing. “I don’t know,” he simply muttered with a shrug.

He saw Alex’s hand move on the table until it finally reached his shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze. “It’s alright, mate,” he answered apologetically, yet not giving up on the sense of brotherly superiority in his tone. 

After that, it seemed Alex got more careful around him, dropping his previous amused curiosity for a deeper concern. Tommy was not the same, but who was he to know how Tommy really was? They had met in such dreadful circumstances that Alex couldn’t claim he knew what the real Tommy was like. A part of him maintained that there was no real Tommy and what he had read in books topped it with his profound belief in identity being a never-ending evolution of the self. What mattered now was that Tommy didn’t seem well, he didn’t seem as if he had gone back from Dunkirk at all. Alex was dying to ask him if he could still hear bombs dropping every time he closed his eyes. For Alex didn’t anymore. His recurrent nightmares had come to an end a few months ago. Now he only had sporadic occurrences of cold-sweats and rude awakenings.

“It’s alright,” he repeated, not completely believing in his words. He paused before his wide smile exposed his almost perfectly white teeth. “You want me to find you a job, don’t you?”

“No!” Tommy exclaimed, checking his head and feeling sorry when a few heads turned to them. Alex didn’t pay attention to the patrons glaring at them, so Tommy added more quietly, “Don’t get ahead of yourself, I’m quite incapable of doing anything.”

“Oh, stop it,” Alex protested with a chuckle, punctuating his words with another sip of beer. They seemed less and less bitter since he had come back, those sips. “But let’s not talk about work when I just get out of it,” he said and raised his hand to order another round. “Just tell me what you’ve been up to,” he insisted and Tommy complied.

When he finished telling about his brothers’ death, about helping his father fixing the roofs of the county and his journey to London, and when Alex finished telling him about his temporary position as an accountant for the army, they had downed not less than three pints each and Tommy had to admit he wasn’t feeling himself anymore.

Alex on the contrary had grown even more loquacious and witty the more he drank, looking at Tommy with glassy eyes which the younger man didn’t know how to decipher.

“You’re drunk,” Alex laughed when Tommy had a hard time sitting back in his chair.

“I don’t feel that well,” he admitted, wiping a drop of sweat that was rolling down his forehead.

Unlike what he had expected, Alex laughed even more, his Adam’s apple obviously trembling in his throat. “You’re probably sick. You need fresh air,” he said as he got up, not as unbalanced as Tommy was. “Now, now, follow me.”

* * *

<https://hairylittleproblems.tumblr.com/post/186749123650/cover-for-a-great-or-little-thing-by-a-french>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is longer as I came to realise that 5 chapters wouldn't be enough to tell everything that I want to tell. I now think it'll be around 7 or so. And it will most likely feature other shorter works to complete it. Nothing is settled yet.  
> Your comments and kudos warm my heart <3  
> Follow me on Tumblr for more updates and special content (hairylittleproblems)  
> xoxo


	4. Ruins around our hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /!\ Dear all, you know what my mediocre self had forgotten? The Blitz, aka a constant bombing of England by German forces from September 1940 to May 1941. The Dunkirk evacuation took place from the 26th of May to the 4th of June 1940, so a few months before the Blitz. Yet, in the last chapter, I said that Tommy was wandering in London in April 1941. Could he be so reckless about it? No. Hence, I’ve changed a couple of dates (Tommy’s visit in London now took place in summer 1941) and a couple of details (ruins in London, etc.) for accuracy’s sake. This chapter will reference to the Blitz, that’s why I’m rambling about it right now. This is also why it took longer than expected – my uncultured brain was trying to find a way to make it work. Peace xx

“There you go,” Alex panted as he dropped Tommy on a chair, after he had to wrap his arm around his comrade’s waist to walk them up the flight of stairs leading to his flat. Tommy didn’t weigh a lot, probably due to his poor alimentation and the bad night which sucked out all of his energy, he reckoned, but still, the action had killed Alex’s back more than he was willing to admit.

Tommy sat, huffing and puffing, as his hand reached for some strands of hair that had stuck to his forehead when it had poured during their small walk along the Firth of Tay.

They were drenched and summer in Scotland did nothing to warm them up properly. Freezing, they had made their way to the small flat, their body pressed together as the effect of alcohol was slowly fading. In spite of the time, Tommy was positive they had regained their past closeness.

Alex took off his coat and his shoes, letting them fall in a corner of the flat, before collapsing on his bed, his hair wetting the sheets. Tommy looked at him for a moment – Alex’s stretched arms tugged the bottom of his shirt out of his trousers, exposing a strip of pale skin and the trail of hair running up to his navel, brown and apparently soft to the touch. It took Tommy a few seconds before he realised Alex was in fact looking back at him, his green eyes jeering and a satisfied curl on his lips.   

Turning paler, Tommy looked away, sensing alcohol had become a poor excuse now that the rain had washed their tipsiness away along the shore. He busied his eyes with anything he could find on the shelves or piling on the floor, except the bed where his friend was still lying.

Alex’s quarters were nothing extremely better looking than Tommy’s back in Reading. Which was intriguing coming from Alex who seemed on a whole different level than Tommy. Money-wise, of course. Intellectually too, much to Tommy’s embarrassment.

There were a single bed, pushed in a corner of the room, a bathtub and a sink, a small oven and a kettle waiting on the stove. Everything smelled of smoke and grease, probably from the factory the Army had requisitioned, despite all of Alex’s obvious attempts to chase the smell by opening the windows. Tommy saw his uniform, folded at the end of his bed – it wasn’t the same he had worn in Dunkirk. The colours had slightly changed and, most importantly, it was quite clean and perfectly dry. Still the sight caused a violent shiver to run down his spine.

Alex must have seen what had happened, for he stood up as to distract Tommy from his memories and walked to the sink, pouring some water in a glass and sliding it between his friend’s hands.

“Drink that beer away, mate,” he commented cheerfully, the expression on his face a bit darker. _He had seen then_ , Tommy thought before bringing the glass to his lips. “And get out of your coat, for Christ’s sake, you’re going to freeze to death! Didn’t your parents tell you this?”

That was pure distraction, Tommy agreed deep down inside himself. Yet he shrugged his wet coat off and let it hang on the back of the chair, before mirroring Alex’s previous actions and taking his shoes off. His socks were soaked as well and there was a hole exposing his thumbnail. Alex laughed.

“You’re really an adventurer then,” he joked before falling back on his bed, folding his arms under his head.

Tommy didn’t know what he was supposed to think about his friend’s attempts to make him speak, small-talk, all night long. It must have been exhausting, yet Alex didn’t seem to get bored, his eyes always sparkling with interest. Tommy ignored how on Earth he deserved someone like Alex around him, someone who cared.

“How’s London?” Alex asked out of the blue. Tommy looked up to him, still hesitant to be met by the sight of his abdomen. Alex had tugged his shirt back in his trousers with more care than ever, as though he had read Tommy’s mind and didn’t want to disturb him more than what he deemed necessary. There was a thin line between what Alex wanted to do and what he thought would make Tommy shy away.

 “Very different,” Tommy blurted out, sipping some water so his throat wouldn’t feel so dry. What was it that drove him so strange around Alex? Tommy cast him another glance, more slightly confident. His green eyes were clouded with what remained of alcohol and his tiredness of the day, but there was a dreamy smile on his lips.

“Very eloquent,” Alex teased back, his eyes focusing on his interlocutor. The intensity Tommy found in them felt so overwhelming he was compelled to reply.

“Lots of ruins. It felt a bit chaotic.” There wasn’t a lot he could say about it. After Dunkirk, Tommy had not been able to feel what normal people feel, his eyes and heart always blind to other people’s despair, for every time he closed his eyes, he saw worse.

“During the Blitz, we told Aunt Penny to move, to go back to Scotland or something,” Alex began, leaning back against the wall. “But she didn’t listen.”

Tommy nodded, waiting for his friend’s deep and soothing voice to keep on filling the room.

“There’s nothing harder than to imagine the people you love undergoing such disasters. Helpless,” Alex added after a few seconds. For good measure. Tommy came to realise he loved the air of absolute which slipped out of his words – he sounded like a wise man, honest with his feelings, not afraid of formulating them and sharing them with a man of his age. Alex was so much stronger than Tommy would ever be.  

Yet Tommy wanted to contradict him. The truth, the ugly truth, was that when he was in France, Tommy had never feared for anyone else but himself. His brothers, long gone away from his sight, were not in his mind when he ran, a rifle in his hand, and tried to shelter from the bombs. He had not imagine them facing the same risks and potentially dying. The news of their death had been announced to him back in his parents’ home, as a call back to reality, while Tommy felt miles away from life.

“It could have been her,” Tommy heard himself say instead. Alex nodded with a sigh and Tommy captured the exact moment he brushed the thought away with a shrug.

“I don’t know what I would’ve thought,” Alex said after a few seconds. “I wouldn’t have been terribly sad, if you know what I mean.” Tommy knew exactly what he meant. “London seems far away from here and even further away from me. When I read about the war, here, in Dundee, it’s like reading a book. Everything could be invented that it wouldn’t make so much of a difference, would it?”

_It wouldn’t_ , Tommy thought, his eyes drowning in his glass of water. He himself had felt pretty safe in Berkshire, his brothers away from home, it was as though they would come back one day, riding their bicycles and playing with their dog, loud and alive, just like before. Their death, or rather like the story of their death, was nothing more than a string of words, their absence wasn’t palpable yet.

“Come here,” Alex said, his hand petting the other side of the bed as his never-ending legs hung from the mattress, his heels meeting the floor miles away. “Come on, you’re sad and lonely.” His voice had recovered its cheerfulness, all its friendly sarcasm.

_Was he?_ Tommy hesitated a tad before standing up and adopting the same position on the bed. The sheets smelled like Alex. The wood-burner spread a nice warmth in the room and their silence found itself covered by the sound of the rain against the windows. _What a wonderful way to die_ , the young man thought as his head rested on the woollen cover.

With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Tommy could feel the rough cotton of Alex’s shirt against his skin every time that the other man, purposely or not, fidgeted on the bed. Tommy tried to find a position which would keep his body far from his friend’s constant contact, but soon enough he felt exhausted and simply let his limbs loose on the sheets, his eyes half-lidded and unfocused.

“I don’t really know what to do,” Tommy began, the words slipping out of his mouth without his permission. “I don’t even know where I am.”

As though the implication was clear enough, Alex didn’t reply. He had seen through Tommy the moment he had recognised him in the pub – his position, his lost eyes, the paleness of his cheeks, everything screamed chaos, deeper than anything Alex had ever been through. Despite all his protestations, his claiming that he wasn’t smart enough for his friend, that he was boring and uncultured, shallow or dense, Tommy was the one who felt, truly felt. Felt too much, to the point that now his senses were annihilated, beyond repair. He had felt so much that he was incapable of speaking, incapable of reflecting on his emotions – raw and dropped into the world after having walked down to its hell.

“The simplest things I can’t do,” he added as his throat tightened. “When my father asked me to help him, I didn’t even know where to begin. All those tools lying in front of me, I didn’t know which one to pick, how to climb up the ladder. I had to mimic him for everything, otherwise I didn’t know how to keep on…” He paused for a while and Alex ceased to wait for another word. “Walking.”

Tommy’s lips pursed as he swallowed his saliva, his thoughts not that clear anymore. Was it the beer, the faint impression that he was surrounded by someone who could understand him, or the overall tiredness that had slowly slid inside of his brain during the night, he couldn’t tell.

“Aren’t you a bit lost sometimes?” He asked Alex, turning to him, his forearm suddenly brushing against his.

“I kept myself busy so I wouldn’t have to think about it,” the other young man replied, his lips parted for a little while when his green orbs fixed on Tommy’s hazels. Alex’s hands itched with the urge to give his comrade a hug, just like he had kept him in his arms late at night in the attic, when none of them knew what tomorrow would bring. Things had changed, Alex supposed, he couldn’t allow himself to touch Tommy for Tommy didn’t need to be touch anymore – that wasn’t human touch that he so desperately needed, but human comprehension.

“Then I guess you don’t really know what I’m talking about,” Tommy concluded, sighing and turning back into his previous position, gazing at the ceiling.

There wasn’t any animosity in his tone, yet Alex felt like he had been violently pushed away from his friend. With it came the realisation that there wasn’t anything that he could do to help him. Tommy had come to him, seeking something that Alex couldn’t provide, and now he was bound to let him go. The feeling was nothing compared to those days during which they had tried to get on a boat, their days on the beach, this helplessness, but Alex swore it could bring the same tears to his eyes.

They remained silent for a long time, the silence only broken by their slow breathing and the rain drumming against the roof. At some point he even wondered if Tommy had fallen asleep. Not that he would mind, there would always be some place in his home for Tommy. But the younger man sniffed, and Alex thought he had to say something.

“Where are you staying?” He should’ve come up with something more compelling. Tommy would undoubtedly think he wanted him out.

“Above the pie house,” the other simply replied. He really needed a job if he wanted to pay the nice kitchen lady, even if he know she had lowered the price when she had seen him, drenched and hungry at her door.

Alex nodded, his entrails clenching when he felt the other boy moving on the mattress. That’s it, he was leaving. Talking about their meeting, they had never thought about any _after_. Would he go away again? Would he stay for a week? More? Less?

“You can stay here tonight.”

Tommy froze on the mattress and frowned. Alex’s words did not carry any sort of hesitation, causing Tommy to think that it wasn’t so much of an offer, but more of a plea. _Stay here tonight_. His cheeks burnt all of a sudden.

“There’s only one bed,” he reminded his friend, his breath short with anticipation. He would sleep on the floor if it meant he could stay with Alex a few hours longer.

“We slept in the same bed in the attic.”

That wasn’t really of a reply, but Tommy was willing to settle for it. Alex’s cheeks were pale and his eyes so sure that he couldn’t deny him anything. Yet it felt so hard to swallow right now.

“Alright,” he nodded, almost no sound coming out of his mouth.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading in spite of everything!  
> Leave a comment or a kudo if you enjoyed it!  
> See you~


	5. Between the shadow and the soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve struggled quite a lot with this chapter. I didn’t know how I wanted it to look like, etc. I made a lot of plans, but couldn’t find a dynamic angle for a long time. Hence it’s been a while since I last posted. I hope you’ll enjoy it. Tell me if you did (or if you didn't).  
> Also, the title of this chapter is a quote from Neruda's sonnet XVII. Read it, I think it suits this story a lot.

Tommy vaguely remembered learning something about coral lips in a poem at school and never would have he imagined that someday the same words would suddenly pop up in his mind, at five in the morning, in a dark bedroom, making his heart flutter in his chest.

Alex was asleep when Tommy woke up, his lashes trembling every time his eyeballs moved under his lids, deep into some dream Tommy had no idea about. The dream in itself didn’t seem to be too intense, nor too painful, for the young man would have realised if it were so – Tommy knew a lot about nightmares. And it was actually a nightmare which had woken him up a few minutes before.

If anyone had ever had a doubt about it, Alex was beautiful. Tommy didn’t even had words to describe how beautiful he was. That was almost nauseating how his body moved and how his lips curled into smirks and smiles and how, despite his hard work in the military, his skin seemed unblemished and as soft as a new-born’s.

Alex was certainly the kind of unbelievably perfect men books were all about. It scared him sometimes. Tommy paled in comparison. Tommy knew that for people to come to like him he shouldn’t be compared to anyone, otherwise they always tended to think he wasn’t particularly anything.

That was the reason why gazing at Alex’s face, sleeping next to him in bed, felt like a privilege he would be deprived of very soon. And with reason. Waking up next to him, Tommy had forgotten what his nightmare was even about – they were more or less all about the same thing anyway. But Alex’s beauty had frozen his anguish and made it vanish. The bed was warm, welcoming. Tommy was not alone.

In fact the bed was so small that he could feel heat radiating from Alex’s body. He could hear their heartbeat in the dark as their breathing interlaced in a soothing melody. Without him realising, Tommy’s hand slid on the covers until it touched Alex’s inert fingers. In spite of all the times they had shared an embrace, their shoulders had bumped into one another, their feet had brushed against one another, it felt like the first time Tommy was touching him. His skin was warm, not cold like the younger’s fingers, not trembling in the aftermath of a nightmare, not rough after many occurrences of nails biting. Smooth and firm to the touch.

Alex didn’t even wake up when their hands made contact, he didn’t even move, and Tommy felt as though he was standing on the verge of illegality. So he withdrew his hand and for a long time he didn’t manage to fall back asleep.

* * *

Alex would have been lying to himself had he pretended he didn’t fear Tommy had left.

The thought had been messing with his brain the whole day. It was like standing on top of a cliff, not knowing where the young man would be if he left suddenly. Alex was sure Tommy’s propensity to disappear forever would prove to be effective one day – sooner than later. He wanted to anchor Tommy next to him, in his small flat, in Dundee, in his bed even, for looking at his frowned eyebrows in the early morning, his delicate bottom lip trembling at each snore, was the most soothing thing Alex had witnessed in ages.

There were apparently no reason for Tommy to stay – they had met again, which they had promised each other, but that was all -, except there was plenty of reasons to Alex’s common sense. Even if the younger of the two didn’t seem to be fazed by it, he was miles away from home and barely had a place to sleep, not even mentioning money to eat. Alex had faith in the fact that he would eventually manage to talk sense to Tommy, but it meant the latter would be there to listen to him. And that he couldn’t be sure.

So when he found the young man sitting on the stairs leading to his small one-room flat, picking dead skin from around his fingernails, Alex felt his heart squeeze in happiness.

“You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

Tommy shook his head and Alex could breathe again. More than breathe actually, he burst into laughter.

“Fine, fine, get inside then!” 

* * *

_Tell them you found something. Tell them you’re safe and a friend is with you._

Tommy grasped the gut of a mackerel and tugged on it until something yielded inside. He could still hear Alex’s voice talking him into sending that stupid letter to his parents, his voice almost pleading, his hand squeezing the side of his shoulder in a way Tommy could still feel.

He tossed the pink shred in a bucket which already contained dozens of entrails, his fingers spreading the fish’s flesh so he could make sure the content of its stomach had not spilled onto the fillets. Then as he now had the habit, his hands reached for another fish in the tub and proceeded to cut the head off in one swift motion of the knife.

_Tell them you’re not alone._

The head fell onto the floor of the auction house, joining the other heads in a pinkish pool which tended to turn browner every time an eye would burst in the process. Fluids would seep underneath the dry skin of his bitten fingers, their acidity not getting on his nerves anymore – not after two weeks of waking up at the crack of dawn to clean out freshly fished mackerels, pikes and salmons. His stomach was the one obstacle that Tommy still encountered daily. Yet there was something satisfying in seeing fish being precisely gutted, slowly losing its animalistic shape to turn into food.

Tommy’s boss called “the concern for a work well done”. Tommy had no specific opinion about it.

Fish blood, mixed with a considerable amount of sea water, tended to stain his nails in an orange hue, after hours hunched above different tubs, straining his fingers in the dull buzzing ache Tommy could only get rid of when he dived his hands in clear water.

He didn’t cut his palms as much as he used to at first. Throughout his first week at the auction house, Alex had had to bandage his hands every night, the piece of cotton cloth irremediably soaking in fish blood the next day, causing his wounds to reopen and Tommy to run to his friend’s flat once again.   

_You have to tell them, Tommy. I’d worry if I were them._

His job consisted of small tasks, each one of which could be sliced into another pattern of small tasks, offering Tommy the bliss of having a written scheme for everything that he had to do. First he took the tubs of fresh fish into the shed, then he killed it and cleaned it out – cut first the head, then a big gash down from the tailfin to the top to take the bones and the gut out, then scale it with the side of the blade and toss it in the bucket. Once he was done with the catch of the day, he took half of it to the front of the shop, the rest he put in the van to the camp, to feed the soldiers in training.

That was all – repetitive and reliable -, but it usually took him half of his day, from seven to noon, and it left the most acrid smell on his clothes no matter how long he bathed them in soapy water. Sometimes he would see Alex during his daily delivery, the man going out of his way to receive the fish, always feigning coincidence, but Tommy knew better and apologised for reasons which were unclear to him.

Now that he came to think of it, Tommy was the closest to what he assumed was fulfilment, or at least the general feeling he had been living with before France.

_I’d worry anyway._

He finished the tub of fish earlier that day and washed his hands under the tap outdoors before taking his apron off.

“Mrs Daly,” he called while pushing the basin of cleaned out fish in the direction of the shop.

“You’re finished already?” The small and plump woman asked from where she was standing behind the counter, cleaning the stand with her usual energetic circular motions - Tommy was actually quite envious of how fast and efficient she could be at six in the morning. “It’s only ten,” she exclaimed in disbelief, her eyes scanning the young man before her.

“I thought I could help you a little bit or…” He hesitated, running a hand through his hair which had started to grow longer and longer, without Tommy finding the strength to cut it himself. “Or deliver it already.”

Delivering the fish meant perhaps running into Alex – it was the light of Tommy’s day.

Mrs Daly paused to reflect, probably calculating things Tommy truly had no clue about. “I guess you could,” she finally said, getting back into work soon after. “It won’t be a busy day today, so go back home and rest, alright?”

Tommy nodded, his mind already elsewhere.

 

* * *

Tommy usually arrived at noon, when the soldiers had stopped training and waiting for food to be ready, smoking on the side of the building and looking at him with sceptical expressions. But that day, he arrived way before eleven and the first thing he heard was deflagrations. Dozens of them, then nothing, then the loud voice of a caporal, then a row of shootings again.

His lips parted as he breathed in, his hands trembling on the wheel when he parked the van near the kitchen’s door. He couldn’t see them, but perhaps seeing them, all in line, focused but not scared, would have made his wild fantasies falter.

“Tom!” The camp cook called, as he was himself smoking, leaning against the door. It almost made Tommy jump from his seat, his heartbeat fluttering.

He heard the old man call again, tossing his cigarette on the side before coming to the van, opening the back doors without waiting for Tommy to do so. In all honesty, the latter was incapable of moving, his whole brain focused on the distant deflagrations, yelling from the instructors, everything executed in a martial precision that Tommy had always found unsettling – the reality of war was far from those neat lines and orders they were currently receiving. War was a whirlwind of mindless actions, short breathings and luck.

Or bad luck.

“Oi, Tommy!” Alex called from a distance, the jacket of his uniform opened on his white vest, as he was probably smoking too, casually enjoying some time off from the training or endless paperwork.

The younger of the two turned his head to look at him, oblivious of how long he had been staring at the wheel. The fish tubs had disappeared from the back compartment of the van, the cook was back into his kitchen and Alex was close to him now.

What the other man realised was that Tommy didn’t look at him, but rather through him

“Tommy?” He asked, his eyebrows furrowing when he caught sight of the pale face of his friend – even paler than usual, which Alex had always considered humanly impossible.

After Tommy had found his job at the local auction house, Alex had believed things would start to get better for him – he was eating more, smiling more, waking up in the morning with a sense of duty and responsibility. Alex had even believed he would become his normal self, his past self, which Alex had no idea about but was eager to meet. But here they were, facing each other but not properly making contact, and Alex realised nothing had changed or everything was crumbling down.

“Tommy,” he repeated, changing his strategy and shifting from an interrogative tone to a warmer one. His fingers interlaced with Tommy’s, taking them off the wheel and carefully placing them on the younger man’s lap. “What have you been doing this morning?” He asked as another row of deflagrations tore the punctual silence between them.

“The fish, I took care of it,” Tommy replied, his head turning in the direction of the training field where Alex knew the new recruits were shooting on bottles.

“You did,” he calmly assured, trying to force eye-contact, for he felt the urge to pull Tommy away from here. It was the first time he encountered the lethargic side of Tommy so frontally – he had already seen him apathetic, silent or frozen in reality; never to this extent though. “You did great, we’ll eat them for lunch.”

His praising didn’t seem to phase Tommy out of his mutism.

“Look, I’d kill for a meat pie,” Alex exclaimed, pushing Tommy away from the wheel so he could get on the bench seat and started the ignition. Tommy noticed a bit too late that every time Alex’s hand wouldn’t be busy holding the wheel or changing gears, it would rest on his knee – Tommy convinced himself that it was nothing but a mistake, but he couldn’t coax his burning cheeks that it was so.

* * *

“When it’s over, where will we go?”

There were so many little things Tommy couldn’t fathom in what Alex had just said that he remained speechless, his mouth only opening to echo, “It?”

“The war, silly. What will we do?”

Alex seemed so sure of himself, so sure of the fact that the war would end and that they would still be there, the two of them, to enjoy life at its fullest.

They were walking along the banks, the wind more chilly now that summer was ending in Dundee.

“I don’t know,” Tommy replied, focusing on his steps on the cobblestones and the heaviness of the pie in his left hand.

Alex sighed, rolling his eyes dramatically. “ _I_ know what I’ll do.” His index finger was pointing at the sky as though that was any indication of his plans for the future – Tommy knew Alex’s words were more often than not uttered with a strong sense of measure. “I’ll go to somewhere nice and warm. I’ve had enough rain and wind for a lifetime. I want to know what it’s like to go around all sweaty and thirsty, like in the books.”

“What books?” Tommy doubted they had read the same books. Tommy hardly ever read books anyway.

“Whatever,” came Alex’s reply as he bit into his pie, the mix of crust and meat muffling his words. “ _Robinson Crusoe_ , _Treasure Island_ , _Moby-Dick_.”

“I don’t think we have the same definition of ‘nice’, Alex.”

The other boy laughed, surprised at how sarcastic Tommy had just sounded. That was an improvement of sort, humour. “What other books do you have in mind, then?” Alex asked, not feeling like they should drop the subject now that Tommy was mocking him so shamelessly.

“I don’t want to leave Britain,” he said, a gush of wind covering his voice. But Alex heard nonetheless.

“Ever?”

“Why would I?”

Alex found himself baffled by the simplicity of his rhetoric. “Don’t you want to know how it’s like elsewhere?

“Not particularly.”

Alex stared at his friend, observing his jaw contracting and relaxing as he chewed on his pie, his Adam’s apple going up and down in a funny way. They never mentioned France, even if France was already elsewhere. They didn’t mention France for the France they knew would never be on any map and it would never be a part of their plans for the future either.

“Well, _I_ want you to know,” Alex insisted after what seemed to be an eternity, to the extent that he wondered if Tommy still remembered what they were talking about. “I’ll go abroad one day and I’ll take you with me. By force if necessary. I’ll tie you up and throw you on a ferry with me.”

Tommy giggled, shaking his head in playful disbelief. “You can’t do that,” he repeated, looking at his feet, his grin not faltering even though he was actively trying to conceal it. Which Alex obviously didn’t miss. “You can’t do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Have a nice week!  
> Pablo Neruda's sonnet : https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/121705-sonnet-xvii-i-do-not-love-you-as-if-you


	6. So guiltless and refined

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this is Christmas, and what have you done?   
> Christmas 1941.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter (“so guiltless and refined”) is a reference to Lord Byron’s To Thyrza, a relatively long poem supposedly dedicated to his friend (by which I mean male bosom friend, of course, “sour fruits”). If not homoeroticism, please do enjoy the eroticism of those few lines:   
> “The kiss, so guiltless and refined,  
> That Love each warmer wish forbore;  
> Those eyes proclaimed so pure a mind  
> Ev’n Passion blushed to plead for more.”

Scottish winters were fatal.

Tommy had rarely experienced such coldness and relentless rain. Working in the auction house had become harder and harder every morning, his fingers frozen and red, his body shaken by uncontrollable shivers.

The only comforting thought which animated him and got him to keep on getting up every day was the prospect of spending Christmas with Alex. He had promised. He had said to Tommy they would have a drink at the pub once he was done with the little celebration the army had organised for its conscripted soldiers. There wasn’t so much left for Tommy to do but to eagerly wait for that special night.

It was his second Christmas without his brothers and the happy chatter in his parents’ house. Without the assurance of receiving a pullover or a scarf his mother would have knitted herself, in the secrecy of many sleepless nights. Without the assurance of his brothers receiving the exact same present and of all of them to be genuinely happy about it.

Once he had ridden George’s bicycle all the way to Reading to buy a brooch for his mother using all the pennies he had carefully saved throughout the year. Looking back at it, Tommy realised it wasn’t a very beautiful brooch at all, he remembered he had had a better-looking one in mind back then, golden and delicately crafted, but his fourteen-year-old self had a very loose grasp on the value of things and he had to settle for something more modest. His mother had nonetheless opened a wide mouth at the sight of the tiny copper flower jewel and Tommy reminded her wearing it every Sunday on her blouse.

All in all Christmas had always been a special moment of the year to Tommy.  

Although this year was even more peculiar to the young man. Far from home, befriended Christmas. The more he thought about it, the more he forgot about the circumstances in which he had met the man who now occupied his every thought.

Tommy had no clue what to give Alex, or even if he was supposed to give him anything. Alex had been very secretive about it, but Tommy knew that his family had enough money for all of things his own father would deem “unnecessary”. And Alex was outrageously generous in Tommy’s opinion, which led the younger of the two to think that Alex would offer him something he wouldn’t be able to equal or return in any way.

On one Monday afternoon then did Tommy find himself wandering through the Dundonian streets, thinking about a present he could afford with the few pounds he had earned over the last months. It wasn’t so much about money than it was about finding the right idea. Alex had read everything Tommy could think of and even more, he would enrol to university after the war and probably make a career out of all the things that he knew. Tommy was sure of that.

He then entered a bookshop with the conviction that book would perhaps make him think about something other than the relentless clicking of the soldiers’ rifles screwing and unscrewing as they changed their cartridges.

A book, what a foolish idea, he thought as his eyes met the dozens of greyish works displayed on a table and the hundreds more on the different shelves.

At home, there was only a couple. The Bible in the living-room and a thick history book his father had bought when James had mentioned he wanted to become a teacher, when they were still quite young the three of them. Tommy remembered going through the book and closing it half an hour later, right after the dense telling of the Battle of Hastings, with an intense headache and an even more intense sense of boredom.  

School had never been his thing. He would always spend his days gazing outside and being woken up by his teacher’s ruler hitting the top of his head. He had told so to Alex during one of their nights at the pub and the other boy had laughed so hard Tommy had blushed.

“Looking for something, boy?” asked the old bookseller, as Tommy was scanning the different titles on the table with confused eyes.

“Not really,” he offered as a reply, his voice so low and abashed that he expected the old man to ask him to repeat what he had just said. Moreover he surely smelled like fish and looked out of place in the tiny and warm bookshop. “It’s for a friend. He read everything and I’m not sure I’ll pick something he’ll like.”

“What do _you_ like?” the man inquired, causing a wave of warmth to Tommy’s cheeks.

“I’m not sure I like anything, sir. I don’t really read.”

The bookshop owner sighed and looked at the books separating both of them, probably wondering what a lost soul was doing in here. Tommy could sense the thick disdain from across the room and a woman turned around to look at him with amused eyes. Amused.

He should have gone, but instead he walked to the first shelf he encountered and started to read the different spines. A hero is a man who’s too afraid to run away, Alex had told him several times. Tommy was afraid to run away from the bookshop, afraid to look vanquished and to allow everyone to laugh at him as soon as the door had closed behind him. So his finger ran through the spines, a smile curling his parted lips at the ticklish sensation of the canvas under his pads. Soon enough he realised it was poetry – Tennyson, Wordsworth, Yeats, he knew those names. Byron, he read at the top of the shelf, his interest picked.

His arm stretched as he reached for the collection of poems and opened it, immediately feeling overwhelmed with the many lines queerly twisting on the page.

 _So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,/ The smiles that win, the tints that glow,/ But tell of days in goodness spent,/ A mind at peace with all below,/ A heart whose love is innocent!_ So he read at the bottom of a page, his throat suddenly deprived of moisture. He couldn’t possibly offer that to a man! Not to Alex!

He was aware there was something peculiar between them, something he daren’t name for he was afraid it would break the spell, the harmony of the few moments they shared. But there was a thin line he couldn’t cross, notwithstanding his feelings, there were words he wasn’t willing to tell.

So with a tremor of disgust, Byron came back on his shelf.

Poetry was a bad idea, Tommy came to think as he was waiting for his heart to stop beating so fast in his chest. Stepping away from the treacherous shelves, the young man found himself facing more voluminous books, one of which was covered in a pleasing forest green hue, golden letters writing a name Tommy knew. _Moby-Dick_.  

His fingers slid on the front-page as he pulled it out of its shelf. The book was as thick as the whale itself, he smiled while letting the pages run against his thumb until he reached the final page and read it with interest. _Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main._ Once again he felt his saliva leave his mouth, sensations he would rather forget coming back at him with the same intensity he had first perceived them. _On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last._

That was it, Tommy thought, biting his lips hard. That was the book he wanted to buy, no matter if Alex had already read it or not. It had to be a sadistic urge to share his deepest pains, the dreadful memories lulling him to sleep every night, the fatal days he was reminded of every time he opened the dead body of a fish. The smell of the sea, cruel, uncompromising.

“How much is it?” He asked once he had lain the heavy book on the counter.

“Twenty quid, boy,” the older man replied with a mischievous air Tommy didn’t notice for he was eagerly counting his coins and laying them on the wooden counter, not letting the old bookseller spoil his joy.  

_It was the devious-cruising Rachel, hat in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan._

* * *

  


“Happy Christmas,” Alex exclaimed as he boyishly hugged his friend, his hand tapping twice on his back.

Tommy smiled in spite of the disturbing violence of the hug, he smiled for Alex was radiating with joy, each one of his syllables punctuated with a laughter or a broader smile than ever.

“Happy Christmas,” he replied, his voice deadened in his friend’s coat.

They were standing outside the pub, Tommy had been waiting for him for almost half an hour, for Alex had been running late and it was nearly eleven. The pub was about to close for the night, but Tommy had insisted on waiting for him nonetheless, believing until the very end that his friend would show up, merry from the beer he had drunk with his fellow soldiers.

“It’s closing,” he explained when Alex tilted his head at the bartender whipping the bar. “He won’t let us in.”

“And you’re freezing,” Alex completed, vaguely gesturing at Tommy’s shivering frame.

He had no money for a coat and had had to settle for his usual jacket, despite Mrs. Daly’s protestations.

“Alright, let’s go to my place, I’ve got gin and something to show you,” Alex said, already walking in the direction of his flat, which sounded like a foolish idea to Tommy since his room was far closer than his. Yet he knew Alex was reluctant to lock himself in what he called the “lifeless gaol” of his friend. Especially on Christmas Eve.

Tommy followed, still holding the book carefully wrapped in last week’s newspaper, tightly against his belly, inside his jacket. He had looked at it for the whole night, suddenly doubting his choice. Now that it had sat against him for a long time, the book was welcomingly warm and familiar to his touch and giving it to Alex seemed like the most intimate thing he would ever do.

Once they arrived to his flat, Tommy took his jacket off, carefully laying it folded on a chair so the packet would remain hidden. Alex gave him a curious look but found himself immediately distracted by the process of filling two glasses with gin.

“There you go,” he said with a smile as he handed Tommy his glass. Before the younger of the pair had the chance to take a sip of it, Alex stopped him and opened a wide and grinny mouth. “To Christmas and to the fabulous year that I know for sure is ahead of us,” he started, his glass raised in the air. Tommy imitated him after a few seconds only. “There will be peace and love and friends, there will be sun when it doesn’t rain, but most importantly, we’ll here for one another!”

Tommy swallowed with difficulties, his short intake of air turning into a snort. “Happy Christmas, Alex.” His glass clicked against his friend’s and the burn that followed the first sip marked the last days of the year 1941.

“What is it that you wanted to show me?” he asked after a little while, when they were sitting on the floor, their back to the frame of the bed and their glasses already half empty.

Alex was amazed to realise there was a genuinely casual, relaxed atmosphere between them two, something they did not experience that often given Tommy’s inability to properly think about the present moment. The gin might have been of help, Alex acknowledged with a smile to himself as he observed the juvenile features of Tommy’s face – juvenile wasn’t a term he would have used on other occasions, because his friend’s face seemed to always be bothered by something utterly deeper and frightening.  

To Tommy’s question, a sparkle lit Alex’s eyes and the older man stood up, walking to the kitchen with a wicked chuckle which left Tommy perplex.

“Voilà,” he said as he came back with a brown packet and a smaller one of a brand that immediately caused a wide grin to spread on Tommy’s lips. That was something he had not seen in years.

“Chocolate,” he exclaimed, his cheeks coloured with excitement and the aftermath of his quick drinking of a full glass of gin.

“Indeed,” Alex agreed, handing him the precious dark chocolate bar.

But Tommy was already stripping the chocolate from his paper wrapper and he broke down two slabs, one for him and one for Alex. Oh, that long-forgotten smell, he thought as he manipulated the small rectangle between his two fingers. Alex – surely used to eat it more often – didn’t wait so long and the piece of chocolate soon ended in his mouth. After a second of hesitation, Tommy mirrored him.

He didn’t know one could forget the taste of chocolate in the course of a few years. Yet the peculiarity of the revelation struck him at that moment. The round, spicy taste lingering on his tongue. The richness of it. His eyelids shut as he let out a sound he wished weren’t so similar to a moan.

“And _this_ is for you too.” Alex jovially said, the sensation of a packet slid on his lap dragging Tommy back to reality. His eyes fell on the brown present he had not yet peeled from its mysterious envelope.

Tommy’s fingers worked the packet open and discovered a nicely knitted piece of wool, blue and deep green – a colour he now associated to his friend’s eyes.

“It’s a scarf, silly,” Alex intervened again, poking his shoulder with a teasing smile. “Mind you, I did not knit it myself.” He meant it as a joke but confronted with his friend’s lack of reaction and the fact that Tommy’s eyes were still glued to the scarf on his lap, Alex burst into laughter, only a tiny bit hurt. “Hey, don’t pull such a face while I’m just trying to keep you warm this winter!”

“What face?”

“ _That_ face! You seem… dumbfounded.”

Tommy rolled his eyes at the comment. “No, I love it very much. Thank you.” His fingers rubbed the smooth wool, immediately sensing the warmth radiating from it. He did love it, more than he could phrase it. Not only because Alex had given him something which he had carefully selected among dozens of other options, but also because the fabric had kept the smell of his home. “I have something for you too,” Tommy said, jumping back on his feet and hurrying to his jacket.

Without a second thought, he put it in Alex’s hands a bit forcefully, his eyes studying his face for any indication. The tall man opened the present and read the title out loud with a tell-tale apologetic smile.

“You’ve read it already, haven’t you?” Tommy asked with a sigh, taking the book back and considering for a second what to do with it. Read it himself, maybe? Yet it felt even more painful to have the object of his affection back into his possession although it should have belonged to the man he loved the most in the world.

“I am partial to adventure books,” Alex encouraged him, taking the novel into his hands again and scanning it with loving eyes. Next thing Tommy knew, the other man was going through the first pages before he found the right chapter, a content smile on his lips. “Alright, alright, listen to this.”

Tommy leaned closer, adjusting his stiff position against the frame of the bed, his head resting in his hand. Gin had worked its magic. After a theatrical throat clearing, Alex began.

“ _With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face – at least to my taste – his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable._ ”

Alex had a deep voice, calming like the waves of the ocean. Not the dreadful sea they had swum in back in Dunkirk, no, no, no, the sea fairy tales talk about, soft and motherly. Tommy listened to him, his eyes aching more and more with sleepiness, yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop listening. The words were mesmerising and the friendship between those two sailors captivated him like never a book had.

“ _He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him;_ ”

Tommy frowned and looked up at Alex, but the latter had his green eyes seemed glued to the page and it appeared clear now that he wouldn’t stop so soon.

_“-that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be.”_

“Alex,” Tommy interrupted, his voice equally stern and confused.

This time Alex looked up too and their eyes met. Tommy saw his friend swallowed and set the book aside, the light dancing in his green orbs faltering. Tommy’s mouth opened wide to protest, what was it that Alex was trying to say? What was it that these words meant in this moment? The book was about sailors fighting a whale and lots of them dying, Tommy thought, the crease between his eyebrows intensifying to the point Alex’s previous happiness sunk a bit more. This book was about the war, and losing his brothers.  

“Say something,” Alex almost begged, his gaze falling to the wooden floor.

Tommy looked at him, so unusually sad and…hurt.

“Is it really what you think?” he asked, forgetting for a moment that the entire world wanted him to leap on his feet and leave immediately.

Alex nodded quietly, not looking up. Tommy didn’t want to leap on his feet and leave. In fact Tommy wanted to stay. He wasn’t sure what the book was trying to say exactly, but he believed it worded his feelings better than any book had before.

“Do they love each other?”

Alex startled, his eyes finally finding Tommy’s. “I think they do.”

Tommy nodded. “That’s what I thought too.”

Their eyes met and Tommy felt his whole body burning, his palms sweating buried deep in the scarf on his lap. Then Alex closed the book and slid it on his bed, his body suddenly extremely close to the other man’s. His hand searched for Tommy’s in the mess of wool on his lap, their fingers interlacing in the fabric once they found each other. Tommy could feel his friend’s heartbeat through their skins and he found it ever so slightly harder to breathe. For Alex was looking at him, his sad and genuine eyes urging Tommy to take a decision right now, for it seemed neither of them could take it any longer – the waiting, the shyness, the awkwardness and that perpetual hesitation. A moment later, Tommy’s lips planted themselves on Alex, telling him all that he couldn’t voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading :)  
> As you may have noticed, the next chapter will be the last of this story, but not the last of their story!  
> Please do comment to tell me what you thought about this one. I'm always delighted to read about your reactions!  
> See you soon and take care~


	7. In no time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally

 

A railway station in the south of Scotland.

The cold wind of early March in the morning.

Two friends who would like to be closer, a sense of paralysis holding them back, looking at each other.

Alex smiled to Tommy, his heavy kit on his shoulders. His smile is small and peevish, not reaching the sad aura of his eyes, an apologetic smile, almost, for Alex didn’t keep the unspoken promise between them.

The year is 1942.

“I’ll see you next Christmas,” Alex offered as some sort of comfort.

There were tears in Tommy’s eyes. No matter how hard he had tried to ready himself throughout the past few weeks, the younger of the two had not managed to keep his composure in the crowd. Alex looked around them as to give his friend the opportunity to pull himself together. For he couldn’t simply reach for his hand, nor could he embrace him one last time. Many soldiers were surrounding them, waving goodbye to their girlfriend, their mother, their father, getting in the wagons with clamour and the spirit of those who’ve never seen their comrade die, rejoiced of the deviation of a bullet.

“Will you,” Tommy whispered back, but Alex’s life held fully to his lips and he caught each of his words despite the noisy crowd. It wasn’t much of a question, just a bout of inert desperation, bitterness. He couldn’t resent Tommy for not believing him anymore, and he couldn’t let it show that his whole being was trembling with the idea of not seeing him anymore, not in this life.

“Of course,” Alex replied with a wider smile, before being interrupted by the whistle of the train. “Oh, this is my call.”

Tommy startled, stepping closer and stopping before attempting to hug him, just so they wouldn’t be betrayed, there, in the middle of that crowd. A tear rolled down his cheek as Tommy’s gaze dropped to the ground.

Alex’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, taking the thinner frame against his chest, feeling his shoulders shiver with a combination of fears – to be caught, to be seen, to be left alone.

“I’ll be back in no time,” Alex whispered against his ear. “I’ll be back in no time to kiss you.”

* * *

 

The next day. His train was leaving the next day at seven.

The idea had kept Tommy up throughout the previous night, his body tightly pressed against his. It was like laying under the blade of a guillotine and waiting for it to finally fall, every second multiplying by ten, yet never being enough.

More than the Germans, they were fighting time. And they had no time anymore.

“Cheer up,” Alex laughed as he dropped his kit on the floor of their room.

They had left Dundee in the morning for Edinburgh, where they had rented two beds in some sort of inn in the outskirts of the city. Tommy was sitting on one of the beds, the one they would use for the night, Alex assumed as his eyes slid along the round-shouldered frame of his friend, realising he had grown even more silent and withdrawn during the past few days.

“Hey,” Alex called as he sat on the bed with him. His long fingers cupped his face, but Tommy tilted his head away from his soft grip. Alex didn’t give up and kissed his cheek. From that Tommy didn’t try to runaway hopefully.

The draft letter had come two weeks before, reducing to a handful of dust all the effort they had put into getting better, all Alex’s attempts to cure Tommy from the nightmares that woke him up almost every night. He had almost succeeded, their closeness, their love had almost succeeded. But now Tommy woke up in sweat several times a night, shivering and incoherent, mumbling nonsense Alex wasn’t ready to hear and pleading him to stay.

“You promised we would spend a normal night,” Alex reminded the younger man, his hand drawing circles in his back, in a fashion which worked less and less to bring him back to reality.

“You promised you wouldn’t leave me.” That had come to be Tommy’s favourite argument.

Alex smiled bitterly. “I wished.”

His fingers combed some of Tommy’s longer strands of hair. They curled and looked very far from the fresh and terribly short hairstyle Alex now bore. He looked like those Greek ephebes, a bow and an arrow in their hands, delicious curls framing his pale skin, kissing his cheekbones. Every time Alex played with his hair, Tommy would sigh and say he needed to cut it, only because he knew Alex loved it better longish and antique-looking, just so Alex would protest.

Although this time Tommy remained perfectly silent. When Alex tilted his head to have a better look at his friend’s face, he caught sight of a crystalline drop falling onto Tommy’s knee and being sucked in by the fabric of his trousers.

“Oh, come on, don’t cry,” Alex sighed, embracing him so tight he wondered for a second if Tommy could still breathe – not that Tommy wouldn’t let the man he loved suffocate him, that’s exactly what Alex dreaded.

“No,” Tommy argued, shaking his head, although his voice was breaking already.

They made love all night long. Their bodies rubbing against one another, their thighs providing them the comfort they so desperately needed, while each minute passing felt like agony. Once their bodies couldn’t go on any longer, they fell asleep and woke up well before the sun started to rise behind the tall buildings of Edinburgh.

Then they walked to the railway station, the back of their hand sometimes brushing against one another. They had exchanged their last kiss before leaving the inn’s room, soft and longer than any of the kisses they had had before. During their walking to the station, Alex realised he wouldn’t mind it being their very last kiss, he didn’t mind it being the image of Tommy he would hold to throughout whatever was awaiting.

During their walking to the station, Tommy remembered the undulation of Alex’s body against his during the previous, his groans in the pursuit of bliss, and his cheeks flushed, a weak chuckle escaping his trembling lips, much to the other man’s surprise.

* * *

When the train left Edinburgh, Alex remained fixed on the brown figure frozen on the platform. Others were waving, some were screaming goodbyes and I-love-yous, Tommy was still. Words unspoken, kisses invisible. Alex looked at him until the station was replaced by a dark square of a building and then by the countryside. Then, and only then, did Alex allow himself to be overwhelmed by fear, hiding his trembling hands in his coat.

_Next Christmas_.

* * *

_I’ll be back in no time._

The words had started to twist and form other sentences that he could almost claim with certainty Alex had pronounced before leaving.  

He had not been back for Christmas. Nor had he come back the Christmas after that. All Tommy had received was a letter, written as if a telegram, in the core of last November. Another letter came, in April, not much longer, a series of basic facts, plain statements of his good health and good spirit _. I wish I could write a thousand other words, but time is running out_ , he had written at the end of his Spring letter, before adding his name, not even a kiss onto which Tommy to append his lips.

He would not come back that year either. So was the silent conclusion Tommy had drawn from his friend’s lack of promise. December had wrapped its cold arms around Fishburn.  

He had read news from the front. 1944 had been a busy year, a bloody year, and since summer, nothing had come in the colliery’s mail box. Not a single letter from his parents, let alone a letter from Alex.

There was a latent resignation within Tommy. He _knew_. He had always known. Since the moment he had watched the train leaving Edinburgh, he had known, undoubtedly known, that Alex would never come back.

Yet in spite of this, a new day succeeded to the prior in the dark monotony of the colliery. Late at night, in the dormitory, he listened to his fellow miners’ breathing, imagining they were someone else’s.

They were winning the war, soldiers were coming back from France, from Germany, from Belgium. They were winning the war, but still there was no letter from Alex. Almost a year had passed since Tommy’s name had been picked from a hat and a conscription letter sent to where he still lived in Dundee – the colliery instead of the front, it said, the ultimatum already resolved in the young man’s heart. So he moved to Durham and ow knew the fourth circle of hell.

He was still young. Twenty-three, had he calculated after a brief look in a mirror made him realise how old his face now looked. Five years, he had given away five years of his life for a cause he wasn’t so sure of understanding. He understood without understanding why he had been the silent martyr of so many powers, the powerless shepherd thrown into Inferno, and his scholar friend, his bosom friend, thrown somewhere else, in Inferno too.

Was it over? Had he to let go of his memories of hands brushing against his bare skin, of kisses muffling his cries? Were they not to be back again, those caresses and promises of a better tomorrow? Tommy wondered so, anger bursting suddenly and adding some more strength to his hammering on a rock. The mine’s tight walls echoed very nicely the tightness in his chest, and many a night he found himself silently crying in his bed, for it to stop, for his memories to vanish, for either of the two.

For death? Now he saw more clearly what he had been feeling for the past years. If he had firstly been unable to articulate this thoughts, there was nothing clearer in his mind now. Death held the sweetest, the most honest promise of all. Death would be the end of a day and a night spent in the shadow.

Tommy’s fellows had pictures of their girls laying on the nightstand, they talked about them feverishly while getting down the narrow and sinuous paths of the mine. Tommy had none. He had not been able to follow them when they had invited him downtown, _to get some girls_ , had they said.  His heart craved something else than some carnal commitment.

“You must have girl waiting for you somewhere, Tom,” John teased one day, as they were walking back to the dorms. “You’re so quiet, but girls like that, don’t they?” He elbowed him in the ribs and Tommy let out a weak chuckle, half mock-amusement and half suffocation. “Come on, tell me, you never speak, but I see here the face of a man who longs for his girl.”

Some of their comrades laughed at the phrasing, some told John to shut it. Tommy, on the other hand, wondered if a story could not ease his friend’s need for an answer. A simple story, like those he had told his parents so many times, stories of a happy life.

“I do,” he whispered once his fellows had grown more silent.

“You got a girl?” John exclaimed, beaming. John was younger than Tommy, yet he was so tall and so down-to-earth, as though already broken so many times, that Tommy and some of the other boys tended to see him quite old and brotherly. “How’s she?”

“Pretty. Hazel-eyed and…” He stopped for a second and shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t remember.” He didn’t remember why he had started to tell this story in the first place, it felt like betraying Alex’s memory to do so. What if Alex was right round the corner, listening – it always felt as if he was listening, everything that Tommy said or thought, he imagined Alex was there to hear it.

“Come _on_ ,” John urged, not satisfied with his reply. There was a ritual between the boys to tell every single thing they had done with their girl, _every_ single thing. It kept them alive and working in the mine.

“It was a joke,” Tommy beat a retreat. “I was fooling around, nothing more.”

Some of the boys laughed at John for being so gullible, but John kept his bright, brown eyes on his friend’s face, trying to decipher the smiling melancholy painted on his features as they were walking in the half-darkness.

That night again, as winter was pushing them into the first month of 1945, Tommy draped himself in the memory of their last night in Edinburgh, their bodies pressed against one another, the last sense of warmth he had felt in ages.

* * *

_Dear Tommy,_

_I didn’t know where to write to, I assume you left Dundee and Fishburn already. It took me some time to remember your parents’ address in Berkshire, but I hope I made it anyhow and that they will pass it to you, wherever you are._

_I’m in Rouen, in a hospital. Safe, I must add before you worry yourself sick, like only you know how to. My hopes are that this letter finds you equally safe. They conscripted so many people last spring that I was afraid they might conscript you as well. I prayed for them not to. I didn’t know whom to pray, so I prayed as many deities as I could think of. My fellow Kapoor, a Brit from the Raj, helped me with that._

_I did not make it to Christmas. I missed many Christmases in fact. I failed you, I daresay. But my thoughts were always on you and our time in Dundee. Blimey, it feels so far away. Sometimes I feel like we never met but in my dreams._

_Since I’m well, doctors said I’ll be able to get into a boat to England very soon. Or at least that’s what I understood, given his terrible accent! I’ll send a letter or call you from Dover or London or wherever I’ll find myself home first._

_Please, please, write back and tell me where you are._

_Yours,_

_Alex_

_PS: I’m trying to me more loquacious this time, but my right hand suffered some injury a few months ago and I’m still struggling to write in a manner that won’t scare you. A nurse offered to play secretary, but I was reluctant to reveal to her all of my little secrets. I hope you’ll understand. I know you will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we’re done! Thank you for following me until now!   
> More ficlets might follow (they will, I began one already, but hush hush)  
> Also, Tommy became a Bevin boy, a mine worker that the UK drafted in 1943 until 1948. They received little recognition until 2008, because they weren’t on the battlefield. Many of them died, due to their dreadful working conditions.   
> I mentioned a soldier called Kapoor, for fighters from the colonies didn't receive the recognition they deserved either.   
> Please leave a comment or a kudo (or both if you’re feeling generous) if you enjoyed it.  
> Bye bye


End file.
